


to drown, to burn, to ache

by rosynosed



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23727736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosynosed/pseuds/rosynosed
Summary: oneshot. rose loves the doctor, she's confident in it.what she's even more certain of is that she's not good enough for her.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	to drown, to burn, to ache

Drowning isn’t like the movies.  
It’s not flailing desperately, screaming for help, extending arms in hopes that someone will take your hand and with violent crashes against mountainous waves.

It’s generally unnoticed unless one takes it upon themselves to look for it.It’s intimate, characterized by a whispered and haunting desperation.

That’s how Rose would describe being in love with Doctor- a subdued suffocation Buried under wraps while aching for acknowledgement. . Each of his words were collections of water that seeped into her insides She wanted the reach of his hand, to be pulled into him. Her lungs had only ever returned to her at their touches, their touches that were far too brief for any legitimate breathing.

Loving the Doctor was not like loving Mickey, or Jimmy Stone. While both men she’d pegged as out of her league in her time with them, neither rattled her the way the Doctor. Mickey surpassed her in that he actually got an education. Rose, though she’d never let these words escape her lips, held a silent gratitude towards the Doctor labeling him an “idiot”. MIckey’s family, and even her own mother had she caught her on the wrong day, never allowed Rose to forget how short she fell in comparison to Mickey in terms of her education.The Doctor calling her clever, and the sudden turn of tables upon belittling her boyfriend existed a bit as an unspoken win for her.  
Jimmy Stone really didn’t have anything that Rose didn’t, but he managed to convince her otherwise. He was the reason her education was cut short anyways, seducing her ego by telling her that she had no point in finishing school, that she was destined to work a dead end job, but that if she’d stayed with him he’d be able to take care of her.

But even with as small as both had made her feel, neither held a candle to the Doctor’s ability to disparage her. Like Mickey, it was never intentional, even his snide comments about the human race were merely embellishments resulting from his own frustrations (and seldom directed at her). Yet, it still held far more weight than any other inferiority she’d felt before. He was considered a God by some, and for good reason. He held not just her world, but all worlds in his hands, and could demolish any of them with his fingertips if he so desired- and next to him she was….

His concubine, as that tree lady had said so long ago.

So she wouldn’t even allow herself to surface. At times maybe she’d let some bubbled reach the top of the water, whispers of her besottedness, but never all of her. Had he known how deeply she had sunk, had he known she’d sunk at all she knew she’d bet with anger, or To love a God is one thing, in fact an obligation, a shared experience, but to lust over one.

Blasphemy.

She jumped when she felt his hands scorch into her shoulders, as he lowered his head for it to level with hers, breath tickling her ears.

“Why so tense looking?” he asked, chipper, unbothered.

She whipped around, eyes lifting and heart dropping,she smiled “No reason.”

“Right. Well, onto Barcelona then, mmm?”

“Onto!”

~~~~~~

Paradoxically, she submerges even more when he’s not around. When the dark is so vibrantly black that it feels tangible. When she’s wrapped in her covers, a ghost of his scent lingering on her hands. Sometimes she finds those hands tracing her own body, she likes to imagine its him.  
The phantom of him was enough to set herself aflame. For beads of sweat to poke out of her flesh in the earliest hours of the morning (or, whatever translated as morning in the TARDIS.) for her skin to flush into crimson and make her throat burn as she stifles his name to fall from her mouth. Not once has she tried to argue with herself that she’d loved him, maybe she was stupid, but never had she lacked self-awareness.  
She thinks about the God thing, on this particular night, and decides he’s most comparable to a Greek one. She’s seen the statues of them, all perfectly trimmed, and most importantly sexy. She eventually connects the dots that she will not be sleeping tonight and walks into her bathroom.Eyes heavy, juxtaposing her steps, which she has intentionally made light. Sometimes if he hears her stepping so late he worries she’s sick, or plagued with nightmares that reflect whatever their prior death-ridden adventure was. She seldom had them, she’d spent a lot of her waking hours numbing herself from it by taking responsibility for it all. Her reflection is anger inducing to say the least. Remissively, she brought herself to her sink, flicking on a switch that lit her face in a sickly green and revealing the reflection that stared her down in the mirror.  
She could rip herself in half in these moments.

She looked like a mess, all blowsy and disheveled. Hair evenly split between knots and wayward coils. Her posture was slumped, despite all of the running she did with the Doctor she did not bear a flat stomach.  
A wreck yearning for a God.

Her throat was burning again, but this time because she could feel tears stinging at her eyes. Why the Hell was she even kept around anyways? He’d set it himself when he’d had a different face, she was jeopardy prone. It seemed she had taken the brunt of the majority of people’s death. The Doctor managed to save most, but the ones who were lost she couldn’t help but feel had fallen at the hands of her own carelessness.  
He was the sun and she was the moon. She was nothing special, a large dumb rock that didn’t offer anything but a couple of silly men to gawk at.  
He was the sun, he casted a glow on her, masking her dullness with his luster. He was the reason life managed to exist and fostered growth to all life he encountered.

But there was nothing to her. What she lacked for in brains she made up for with her body count (in deaths, that is. Her other body count was nothing to brag about).

She wasn’t sure when she ended up on the floor, but she was certainly there. Sobbing into her knees, mournful whimpers that grew in volume as each new one arrived. Her hands stroking up and down her back in some attempt at comfort but she couldn't even feel them, body deadened as all of its energy exerted into those noises she made.

A new set of arms wrapped around her, this time enveloping her backside, but she gave no indication of feeling them.

“Rose?”

He was met with wailing.

He pulled her closer.

“Rose,” he cooed, and brought his lips to her hair, “I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.”

She’d ripped herself from his touch, eyes wild if unfocused. They were hardly her own. The whites around them were saturated with a pale scarlet, they were glossy and defeated.

Not once had he ever seen Rose looked defeated.

“Don’t you go and touch me, yeah?” she hissed, backing away from him in a cower as she brought herself into a corner.

His brows furrowed.He would find time at a later hour to mourn the fact that she did not want to touch him, but for now his focus was on her, and her alone.

“What’s wrong?” it was a beg, a hushed beg, but a beg nonetheless.

“I need to go home,” she wasn’t entirely aware where all of this was coming from. She wasn’t sure if it was the guilt she felt for yearning for Him or for the demolition she caused, or if she had finally realized that her true calling was a shop girl. The wool pulled from her eyes.

The Doctor’s throat clenched, and cupped her face with his hands, she didn’t resist and let her cheek fall into his left palm. He began stroking her, strands of hair pulled behind her ear. “If that’s what you want I will, but could you tell me why? This all just feels sort of sudden.

His hearts clenched when she reopened her eyes and stared at him with a sort of emptiness, “I just don’t think I’m cut out for all of this. This savin’ people ‘n sleepless nights ‘n being next to you, I guess.”

He cocked an eyebow, “What do you mean? We’re the Doctor and Rose Tyler! A dynamic duo, two peas in a pod, birds of a feather, what are some other of your stupid little Earthly expressions?”

“See! It’s things like that!” she was yelling/

“What?”

“I’m just a stupid human! You never fail to remind me of that, yeah? Everywhere you go you’re praised, all Oncoming Storm and Lonely God, and what am I? Your “jeopardy prone plus one!”

She was trembling, fear translating as rage as her fists bawled and lip cowered before him.

“Rose.”

“No, it’s okay! Doctor, I get it, people have died in my name. Remember that Dalek all of those months ago? A couple more an’ it woulda been genocide. At my hands! Might I add, even if I was any good, at saving people n stuff, who’s to say you wouldn’t just trade me for a newer model-”

“Rose, we’ve gone over this, you know I’m never gonna leave you, you’re not like the re-”

“I wasn’t done,” her eyes were blazing, the piss like emerald colored light now flickering

“Right.”

“I see the way you look at girls, Doctor. Jabe, Lynda,” her throat tightned as she spat the final name, “Reinette.”

His eyebrows raised, “Rose-”

“And I get it, I know I’m not all that sexy, but if I can’t be good at helping people like you I at the very least want to be….I dunno desirable or somethin’! But it feels like you don’t think twice about me. We hold hands, we hug, sometimes when we walk I feel like we’re perfectly in sync. A twin flame. But then I see the way you look at others and I know, I know I’m not even second best,probably not even tenth if we’re being honest.”

“Sixty three,” the Doctor croaked, wincing as though the words tore at his throat.

“Huh?”

“That’s how many people I’ve seen oggle you in our travels. Can’t imagine someone not sexy would attract that many gazes.’’ he held her gaze, bit he was struggling to do it.

Their faces were impossibly close right now, seeing themselves more than eachohter in the reflections of one another's eyes.

“You counted?”

“Yep.” he said, popping the p.

“Why?”

“Welllllll I dunno. I just did. I mean, I don’t know why I bothered, you practically glitter while you walk, and your hair! I love your hair, like a little halo around your face.”

Rose was beginning to turn red again, “”You’ve never really said anything like that?”

“No? Well I think ‘em a lot. All of the time really. I think I keep myself from sayin’ em cause I think you deserve to hear ‘em from someone who actually deserves you,” his gaze deepened, “Rose, if I’d never met you I wouldn’t even be here now.”

“Doctor-”

He interrupted her by pulling her close and kissing her tears, “Here coms the tear eater!”

She was in a fit of giggles into his arms, and he pressed his lips against hers.

“Never leave me, Rose.” he murmured into them.

And how could she retort?  
She’d reached the surface.


End file.
